One foot in front of the other

As you might guess, I really love walking… it energizes my body and clears my head. There’s something very optimistic about walking; it makes you feel like you’re going somewhere, even if it’s just a walk on a beach.

Seen on the road to the beach…
  
A fall display, seasonal berries, and a graveyard gate dated 1700.

Gray, drizzly, perfect morning beach walk.
  

One of the books I picked up to read this week was Richard Paul Evans’ Milles to Go. It was a sappy read, but at least not predictable. The main character, Chris, lost everything – his wife died from a fall, his partner stole his clients, his business went bankrupt, and he lost his home – so he decided to do what any sane person would do… walk from Seattle to Key West. Of course, along the way his life is changed by the people he meets (and vice versa). At the end of the book (which is the second part of a trilogy), Chris says:

“For the first time since I set foot on my journey, I knew exactly why I was walking. My journey wasn’t an escape from my past; it was a bridge to my future, and each small step was an act of faith and hope, affirming to myself that life was worth living.”

Walking is good for the soul, I think – and walking on Cape Cod is a real treat – even when the weather isn’t perfect. The weather gods today couldn’t decide between seasonably cool and damp and oppressively warm and humid. Despite several changes of clothes during the day, I was never quite comfortably attired for the moment. An old Turkish proverb says that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing choices, and I really came to understand the wisdom in that today.  LOL

Seen on the Rail Trail in Harwich…
  

Nonetheless, I got my walking in… on Breakwater Beach this morning, browsing Brewster Bookstore mid-day, on the Rail Trail this afternoon, and back on the beach after dinner. In between, I hung out on the porch reading, sat by the pool taking notes on some of the books I recently read, and rocked on the porch “surfing the net” as the rain came down after dinner.

  Monochrome twilight

So that’s what I did today… read and thought about what I read, walked and thought about walking, wrote notes and thought about the writing I want to do. All in all, a picture-perfect gray day vacationing on the Cape.

Thought for the day:

“The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”        ~ Jacques Cousteau

I couldn’t agree more! Rain or shine, Cape Cod is just magical.